Hi! I’m swapping my daily android phone for the nth time today and going through my set-up “check-list”. As apps are updating/installing, I thought I’d check in with the hive-mind, what are you all doing to make the process easier? Maybe you know of a way to self-host some sort of android profile server? I’ll post my process + list of goals & gripes below and if you have any tips or suggestions about what I can do better, I’d love to hear them!!
Current Process
- flash clean rom
- walk through the setup process
- enable developer mode + adb
- go through default app list disabling/uninstalling crap i don’t want
- use ‘fdroidcl’ to install all my fdroid apps
- adb push a gpg private key to import into OpenKeychain
- generate a ssh keypair in Password Store, put public key on my server via ConnectBot, clone passwords repo
- log into firefox sync
- log into joplin
- configure fairmail
- configure davx
- log in to google account
- download play store apps I was missing
- go through apps one by one, logging in to accounts + doing configuration
- deal with fucking whatsapp
- hold old phone + new phone side by side and made sure i got everything
Goals & Gripes
App Installation
fdroidcl helps a LOT here, i can have a list of my minimal required packages - password management solution, browser, and notes get installed and it solves a lot of bootstrapping problems for me. I never need to do the dance of opening chrome, downloading fdroid, giving chrome install permissions, installing fdroid, etc.
that said, it is /slow/ and obviously limited to installing apps from fdroid repositories. maybe the slowness i can solve with self-hosting an fdroid repo, but i’m still stuck with having to install a bunch of apps manually either through aurora store, or play store.
App configuration
If i could push in arbitrary app configurations i would be sooooo happy. certain apps have config export/import, like my launcher, but that’s far from all of them. i’ve tried a number of “backup” options, like Titanium, but obviously they don’t work without root and don’t always work /with/ root, especially going across devices. I’ve vaguely considered using Appium for this but … ehhhh.
De-googling
Okay, so I can probably solve the apk problem somehow… I can solve the contacts sync… but I really like android auto, and that’s a non-starter without a system google account afaik.
i’ve never once managed to successfully move whatsapp to another device and not lose my chat history. it starts restoring from a backup, fails, and kicks me into being logged in without any chance of a restore.
Edit: oh and if you have any suggestion that’d make me not hate re-pairing wearos watch… 🥺
Basically this, but update the system, then install GrapheneOS, set that up, setup Google, setup bitwarden, start to load apps from Obtainium, setup each (and uninstall the app from the old device as I go). Then gp apps, same thing. Then device settings. Using FX file manager at some point to login to my nas and pull config and backup files, as necessary.
Takes me a full day, but I can be confident that I have everything migrated and not have to do anything else. I use my phone for many things (tasks.org, calendula, the usual calendar and email, banking…) and also for safety/reassurance (all my medical details are input and updated whenever there is a change, my watch detects falls and has LTE if my phone is dead, etc) which is very important to me being disabled.
It’s a bitch to do but once you have a rhythm, it’s actually pretty much zombie auto-pilot. The initial setup for bitwarden (g play) which has the prerequisite of Google (account) as a whole without having a simple way to input passwords 60+ characters long quickly is oof. Once I had bw ready, it’s just boom boom boom. I get a new phone whenever a family member needs to upgrade to my current one, so it can be a yearly process, or like 3 years. The new device keeps me excited and powering through the dull process.